This past weekend, New Englanders hunkered down, waiting to see what Hurricane Henri had in store for us.
Correction: we hunkered down once we completed our quasi-panic grocery shopping.
I did hit the stores on Saturday a.m., picking up some milk. I was running low, and what if I wanted a storm-watching cup of tea and ran out? While I was there, I also got some parsley and lemons, just in case I decided to make some lemon-parsley pasta, or lemon-parsley chicken. Which I didn't.
Oh, and to go along with the milk, I picked up a package of Halloween Oreos. (I'm quite sure that, in a blind taste test, I couldn't distinguish Halloween Oreos from regular Oreos, but for some reason I like them a lot more.)
After I finished up at the normal grocery store, it was on to Trader Joe's so I could set in a supply of Hold My Cone mini ice cream cones. Chocolate chip. Yummers.
Anyway, by Saturday afternoon, I was fully prepared to hunker down in front of the TV to watch weather porn.
We get a lot of it.
During the winter, it's the Nor'easter that's going to eclipse the Blizzard of '78.
Although we did have Snowmageddon in 2015, when every weekend for a more than a month we got two feet of snow, the Blizzard of '78 remains the standard, and all these years later, it's yet to be outdone.
So instead, we do the panic shopping that the Blizzard of '78 inspired, then watch the reports from local grocery store parking lots, the DPW sand and salt mounds from a couple of towns, then on to Logan Airport, Copley Square, beautiful downtown Worcester (worst whether in New England this side of Mt. Washington), Sandwich on the Cape, Plum Island (where, if we're lucky, we'll see a house swept into the water), Marshfield (where, if we're lucky, we'll see a wave crash over a house by the beach).
Not that we want that Plum Island house to be swept away, that Marshfield house to get flooded out. It's just that the possibility adds a bit of frisson to the event. Sort of like watching Evil Knievel attempt a motorcycle jump over the Grand Canyon. We don't want him to plummet to earth, but if it happens...
The hurricane weather-watches are similar. Only instead of the salt and sand mounds, we're shown folks taking boats out of the water at a couple of local-ish marinas.
Anyway, despite all the stay-at-home-unless-you're-the-National-Guard buildup, Hurricane Henri had more or less petered out by the time it made landfall.
Rhode Island got the brunt of what was by then a tropical storm. Lots of power outages, lots of downed trees.
Parts of Massachusetts got a ton of rain, and the winds took down some trees, but all was quiet on the Boston front.
On Sunday, we had one big storm burst, then rain in drips and drabs.
On my walk, I avoided the Public Garden. With all its old trees, if gale force winds had started puffing and huffing, there was always a danger that one would become uprooted and topple. So I stuck to the streets, avoiding the trees, but getting my miles in.
Back inside, the local stations were still running in all-storm, all-the-time mode, but everyone seemed to be somewhat disappointed that this wasn't The Big One. Or even A Big One.
This wasn't Bob (1991), when we got something like 10 inches of rain in something like 10 minutes. Or Gloria (1985), which I prepared for by taping our windows with masking tape (while my husband laughed), and which resulted in flooding and all sorts of downed-trees. After Gloria ended, we - me, Jim, and my sister Trish - took a walk. In the Public Garden, I made the foolhardy move of standing on the edge of the swan boat lagoon. Next thing I knew, I was on my butt, skidding into the drink. I still remember what I was wearing: jeans and a watermelon-pink Shaker knit cotton sweater, items that absorbed about 10 gallons of yucky swan lagoon water before I laughed my way up and out. The humidity was already at 100% so, although I was soaked through, it didn't seem to make any sense to go home and change. So we continued our walk.
Ah, the good old days.
This hurricane time around, Henri mostly ignored us.
But it brought terrible weather elsewhere: flash flooding in Tennessee that took a coupledozen lives, including those of 7-month-old twins, swept out of their father's arms. An unimaginable horror.
New England? No deaths reported.
Monday brought pea-soupy fog and the sort of hurricane muggies I remember from childhood.
I took my walk in the Public Garden, admiring the lush, almost tropical plantings. The humidity was awful, but there was no rain until the evening. This break in the action gave the Red Sox a chance to make up Sunday's canceled outing, and they managed to win in dramatic extra-innings fashion with a walk-off grand slam home run. Which I, of course, missed because after they had blown a late inning lead and I had turned the game off in disgust.
A fan's life...
I'm happy that we were spared Henri's brunt. Our old trees are intact. There's been no local flooding. All's well in the world, weather wise.
But we'll be staying tuned.
Hurricane season has a while to go. There will no doubt be more opportunities to panic shop and sit here, a stupefied couch potato, watching an endless weather report. Hoping against hope that nothing happens. Hoping against hope that a little something does.
No comments:
Post a Comment